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Green family offers Oral Roberts U. $70M to go legit

January 27, 2008 — Deacon Duncan

Tulsa World reports that the Green family is offering up to $70 million to beleaguered Oral Roberts University, provided the latter can settle the lawsuits against it and re-organize into a structure that offers less opportunity for future abuses.

The Green family plan would infuse ORU with $62 million, adding to the family’s unconditional $8 million donation in November, and it would usher in shared governance, in which professors would weigh in on university decisions and direct the academic aspects of the school.

When the Green family believes the conditions of the proposal have been met, amended bylaws and articles of incorporation will be filed with the secretary of state, the news release said. That is when a new board of trustees will become ORU’s governing body, replacing the board of regents.

Whether this will fix the holes in the walls, or merely paper over them, remains to be seen. This could, however, be the first step in yet another conservative religious school’s long, slow slide into liberalism, objectivity, and enlightenment. Honest scholarship and open accountability have ever been the bane of conservative attempts at higher education.